


Respect

by Filigranka



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Grey and Gray Morality, Politics, Taxes, mixing EU and Legends which means it's not compliant with any of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 19:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14455845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/pseuds/Filigranka
Summary: The bill which finally makes them break up is not even about the Rebellion. It's, perhaps unsurprisingly, about the money.





	Respect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bazylia_de_Grean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/gifts).



> N., thanks for beta!

 In the end, it’s not the Rebellion that made them break up—not directly, at least, since that one bill had nothing to do with the Rebellion. Again,  _directly_. It had everything to do with pride and respect, and honour, and supporting each other, and, yes, it might be also, as Tarkin put it, about persevering the privileges of the older era. Which is probably what, in his eyes, the whole Rebellion was about. Mon even agreed, once, at that point still cheerfully, with some glimpse of hope. Yes, the Rebellion was about persevering the older era, with all its silly rights—and every bloody right may and will be called “privilege” in some political campaign, she had learnt this long ago.

  


_It was long before they move from speaking, political campaign, peaceful protests and occasional raid, espionage, bombing, stealing or assassination—nothing more than what had been, regretfully, the daily occurrence in the Republic’s politics—to the full-fledged civil war. When they move to it, Mon Mothma will absolutely refuse to have anything to do with Tarkin. No attempts of contact, no bargains, no pleas. Davits will scold her for this, sometimes, only half-jokingly. Or maybe “even if half-jokingly” considering where and with what intention he will send the kids he’ll consider almost his own._

‘ _You don’t know him as well as I do,’ Mon will retort. ‘He would just kill me. Take me to prison. Refuse to talk about anything.’_

‘ _No conscious being is immune to sentiments, I assure you.’_

‘ _You don’t know him.’_

‘ _Well, it would be the first-class blackmail material, at least. Even if the Emperor already knows, Tarkin’s position might not survive such a... blow to his reputation.’_

‘ _He would just pursue as harder.’_

‘ _He might not get another chance at pursuing anyone, especially us. Holonet would drag him.’_

‘ _Holonet would drag_ me _,’ she’ll hiss. ‘I’m already a nice, safe target, unlike the Imperial military. Holonet would drag us, our cause, the Rebellion, suggest that I am his agent. You know this, Davits, as well as I do. Nobody would trust me, would trust us again. I might lose the Chandrillan supports and funds. We have much more to lose than the Empire. We must be careful. Especially about reputation. And you and I both know how tarnished and fragile the reputation of anyone who worked in the previous politics really is.’_

 _And Davits’ face will be calm and distantly, politely amused, even as she’ll know the anger beneath, anger, frustration, relentlessness. ‘Yes, Mon,_ I know _. And yes, we must.’_

  


That damn bill which makes them break up is about, ha, unsurprising perhaps, the money. The taxes. The most trivial, important, controversial, risky, ire-raising political topic of them all, in this new Empire just as much as in their old, worn out Republic. If anything could convince people to storm the streets and face the government with its troops and fleet, the taxes and rises in prices were very, very high on the list. Higher than abstract ideas like “sovereignty” or “freedom” definitely. So even Palpatine is careful when it comes to the taxes. Careful, polite, smiling and persuading rather than spitting threats. All of his envoys are.

Tarkin is an exception, of course, at least when he comes to Mon. He smiles when she welcomes him in her apartment, but it’s a pure instinct, sentimental fondness gone in a second. He kisses her cheek nonetheless, let her kisses his, quick, almost meaningless gesture—fate or the Force, will make it their last kiss and they’ll both regret it, sometimes—sits with her for a while, just looking at the sunset. His hand laying atop of her, big enough to cover both her palm and the wrist.

Sunset at Coruscant is so bright, the sun reflecting from every possible glass surface, amplified by the lamps, neon and commercials, that it could burn out your eyes.

‘You should talk with Bail,’ Wilhuff says, finally. He starts stroking her hand, aborts the gesture almost immediately.

Rightly so. She hates manipulations.

‘Oh, I talk with him almost everyday. His daughter is—‘

‘You know what I mean.’

‘About this tax of yours? There’s nothing left to say here. Bail won’t agree to pay any sort of the war, military taxes. Alderaan is neutral, has been for hundreds of years. Her neutrality is guaranteed in the countless treaties of the Republic, Republic of which the Empire is, in law, the heir. It takes its rights and obligations. I support Bail. Chandrila supports Alderaan, if only out of the respect for the treaties and law. Corellia and Kuat will do so, too, and—’

‘—neither me, nor the Emperor have any illusions about the support Organa will get from other aristocrats and the whole Core. That’s why I ask you to stop him, to reason with him. The Rim’s army needs this money, Mon, and I remember you voted alongside me at least a few times, and—'

It won't be the Rim’s army, you idealistic fool, she wants to say, if only for the sake of the days when his devotion to the peripheral systems impressed her. It will be Palpatine's and Palpatine's only and he shed the Inner Rim's skin long ago.

‘—Yes, when it was good of the galaxy as a whole, when it was about education rights, fighting with inequality, not further arming the already biggest army of the millennium!’

‘It was the millennium of the weak army which brought us the inequality in the first place!’ he snorts. ‘But they, you, will let half of the galaxy burn to protect this sacred traditional rights and privileges of yours. To have others to serve you. To use everything and everyone as you please and then cast it aside to be eaten by some pirates, slave traders or mob bosses.’

‘Our only right and privilege is to protect and serve our citizens.'

'We don't ask him for announcing a draft, we aren't—' She knows he means “stupid”, but he catches himself '—restless. Ruthless. The Empire knows its obligations.'

'We protect our citizens from the blood on their hands, too. And giving money to the army means taking the victims of the next war into account. On your account. Especially when we see no direct threat to the Re... the state’s peace and stability, and growth.’

‘Ah. Yes. Them. Your loyal subjects in the Core. Bail and others protect his—the whole Alderaan's, perhaps—wealth and peace at the expense of Rim systems, but that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Of course the Core will protect Bail’s sacred monarchical rights. The right of his people to be wealthy, healthy, educated, high and mighty.’ He laughs harshly and takes away his hand. The sun has set already, but it doesn’t make any difference, not with so many artificial lights. There’re no visible stars on Coruscant's sky. A pity. ‘Yes, bands of pirates and slave traders raiding the Outer Rim’s systems are most definitely  _not_  a threat to your peace, stability and growth. Their victims are neither on your conscience, nor in your budget. Nothing really changed from the last war.’

Really. She has always hated this argument and he knows it.

‘We did agree to go to last war. For the Rim’s sake as much as ours. Our people paid for it. And what did it bring us?’

These are foolish words, she knows immediately. Skirting too close to the treason. The war brought them the Empire and Palpatine as the leader, after all. What more one could ask for?

‘Your people paid.’ Tarkin seems amused. ‘In taxes, you mean. In halted economical development. In staging two operas less every year. Such hardships.' He clicks his tongue. 'The blood was mostly Rims’.’

‘And clones'. And the Jedi's.'

Something dark passes through Wilhuff’s face. Anger, definitely. But also regret. Melancholy, almost.

‘And yet they betrayed us at the first threat to the their sacred, traditional, privileged position. They betrayed the Republic they was willing to die for, just because they couldn’t stand to see any changes in it, any changes which would... One can't help but wonder if they really was dying for the state, not the sake of their own status. Isn’t it terrible what the power does to the noblest of beings?’

‘Yes,’ Mon speaks slowly, very slowly, slow enough for the words to skirt close to treason or at least offence, again, ‘it is.’

He looks at her taxingly, searches for something in her face. There's a predatory glimpse in his eyes.

‘You think I’ll turn you in?’

‘Not for the mere words and allusions, spoken in private, no.’

‘For what, then?’ There’s a challenge in his tone and it almost catches her, she almost answers—not truthfully, but honestly enough to endanger them all. Almost.

‘The cause, I presume. If I happen to endanger it.’

He shrugs with a false nonchalance.

‘For this cause of yours, whatever it is, you would turn me in and kill me, too. Or, at least, I fancy the thought you respect me enough to do so. Of mine—you can always be assured.’

'Of your respect?'

'And my admiration.'

Mon would like to deny it—not the feelings, but what he means by these—if only because she still prefers to think Wilhuff isn’t a bad man. Misguided, yes, but with a good ideals in the heart. She would like to, but something in his voice stops her, makes her realise this is the end Wilhuff envisions for them—killing each other. Being killed by the other. Sooner or later. For their causes. The Empire. The Republic. Whatever. He envisions it and agrees to it. Out of respect. For her, he said, conventionally omitting the other part: for himself, too. Out of his stubborn, foolish, male, military pride.

He may be right. And she cannot stand it—she cannot kiss him and let him stroke her hair, she cannot let him lick the inner side of her knees and thighs, she cannot, cannot, cannot. If only because it’s too dangerous, then. For her (for him, too, but this lines of thoughts ought to stop matter immediately; and she will make them stop, she’s a politician, she lives to command and serve, to serve and command).  _For the cause_.

It ought to stop. Sooner or later, it will, and for now, he needs to leave. She let the thought lie on her tongue, tastes it before voicing. She plays offended, almost coquette, mostly because she doesn't think it will be the final good-bye, she thinks it's just another one of these moments of the clarity, in which they both see how impossible to maintain things become. She thinks they will sink into the old, warm routine soon enough, maybe after the bill will pass or fail and they both will be able to stop sulking about it. She thinks they're both weak, too weak, as always. She thinks  _We—I—will miss each other._ The kisses, the laughter, the discussions, them joking about other Senators, getting enraged by their sheer stupidity—and there's always a lot of stupidity in the Senat, Republic, Empire, no matter the label—the way the glass tables shattered when they slammed their fists on it, both of them, in the middle of the argument, the way they throw a thing or two at the wall, sometimes, because damn it all, they care enough to try to save each other.

  


_After the long negotiations, the bill will pass despite the Core's no. Alderaan's won't pay, though. The rest of Core monarch- and oligarchy-ruled systems will pay its share, preferring, as they'll put it behind the stages, to pay a few hundred thousand credits more than to let some noble from a backwater planet spit on the values of the one of the oldest Core's families. Mon will suspect that Bail will have the debt repaid them in some public tenders or other half-legal business. She will suppose it will cost him more than the tax would, in terms of both credits and the political influence. She won't be able to stop it._

_The bill will pass, the army will grow, Tarkin will be getting more and more of Palpatine's trust, Mon will get involved into the quickly-changing Rebellion—what choice they have, when the army's growing?—and when they'll stop sulking, when they'll dare to miss, there'll be always too many things to do, too many secrets and schemes to hide from each other. They might be weak, but the history won't be._

_She will regret it, one day, she will regret her adamant refusal to use their old camaraderie as a pressure point, she will regret it, seeing Leia a few days after the destruction of the Death Star, when the fate of Alderaan finally catch up with her. She will regret, not because it could change anything, but because it would put her in the first line, would force her to make the impossible choice and face the consequences. It would—perhaps; she will never know for sure—spare Leia and she is just a child, she has the whole life of guilt and well-hidden pain ahead of her. Mon will think_ It should have been me  _and sometimes, much to her disgust, in the darkest corner of her heart she will be grateful it wasn't._

  


Mon turns her head when he tries to kiss her. Shakes it, when he aims for the cheek instead. Sees the surprise and—perhaps, perhaps, who knows—hurt on Tarkin’s face, quickly hardening into the offence. Good. Good. He won’t be asking, then, he won’t deign himself with questions and persuasions.

‘The Senator commands,’ he says, finally, ‘the soldier must listen.' And they both, she's sure, thinks “For now.”

 


End file.
